Julie H. Rucker
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Activity #1: Reflection on Governance Structure and Procedures at School
“As-Is” State
An environment that...
has many different and often conflicting goals among its divisions and departments
. The root of this “As-Is” state is division. Without identifying primary goals and keeping the staff focused on these goals, then there is little room for unity among the staff. A staff that does not work toward the same goal(s) is not as effective. For example, at my school, we often have conflicting goals with academics and sports. There are those who believe that sports should be the priority, and then there are those who place academics ahead of sports. But our community is the same. I would say that most men in our community are more concerned with how many games our football team wins than they are about our schools making AYP.
punishes mistakes, and hides or rationalizes problems
High school teachers and administrators are quick to rationalize that learning deficits students have should be blamed on previous teachers in middle and even elementary schools. Often I hear these comments from teachers that have students who are failing their classes; the teachers rationalize that social promotion is the culprit for the student not being successful in their classroom.
rewards following established policies
Teachers who think out of the box, so to speak, may not be rewarded as quickly as those who follow the “rules,” even if the rules are not helping students be better learners. Teachers who try new strategies often are not recognized while those who do things as they have always been done are more often recognized. A teacher who wanted to try using another method of teaching in her classroom that does not go with the Learning Focused model would be penalized in an evaluation for not following our school policy, no matter if the students were actually learning. The administrators walk into a room looking for LF strategies, and if they do not see it, then the teacher is not following policy. If they do see LF strategies, then the observation would be positive.
lets short-term problems drive and dominate work activity
Administrators have to deal with a multitude of problems, large and small, on any given school day. They have to be able to stay focused on the big picture, on their school goals, and not get caught up in the short-term difficulties. For instance, a teacher at my school disappeared this past October. There are currently no clues as to where she went, if she was harmed, if she's dead, or if she chose to leave willing. This is a tragic issue for a school staff to face, but at the same time, it cannot dominate our lives. Our students are in our school to get an education, to become productive members in society, and we cannot be deterred from that goal by this tragic event. Right after this happened, teachers were asked to go on national television on news shows. I even went to Macon on a school day with another teacher at the request of someone who was not a school administrator. But the administrator did not disapprove (he encouraged it) and provided another teacher to cover my classes. I did not have to claim a personal day for this either. This would be an example of letting a short-term problem dominate a work activity!
relies on inspection to catch mistakes before the customer receives the product
For me, finding an example for this state was more difficult than the others. I think I became bogged down in the words “inspection” and “customer.” Who in a school does the inspection? The administration? Teachers? State Board of Education? Who is the customer? Students? Businesses? Colleges? Universities? Military? The best example I could think of from my school is social promotion. This year, there were several students who were promoted to ninth grade from the seventh grade in the middle school because of their ages only. These students are not prepared for high school. They are missing important skills that they will need to be successful. Yet they were passed on anyway. They will rock along through high school until they reach the 11 th grade (if they do not drop out first), and the “inspector” in the form of Georgia High School Graduation Tests will come along and identify them as not meeting the standards for graduation. Is this the fault of the student, or were they “failed” by the system? Or both?
gives management full authority for top-down decisions for change
This “As-Is” state could occur from the school board or superintendent on down to the school. Or it can actually occur at the school level from the principal's office down to the faculty. In my school system, the board of education often makes decisions and do not get any teacher, student, or parent input. Other times, they get input yet do what they want to do even if it goes against what was recommended by the faculty in the schools. One such example is the school calendar. We are all asked to choose one of three calendars designed by faculty committees, yet the school board will choose the calendar they want, even if it is not the one desired by the teachers.
tolerates turf battles as inevitable
A simple example of a turf battle occurs over videos shown at school. Some departments claim that they have the right to show a particular video over another department; when a video is shown outside of their “turf,” they are often angry and may hold grudges against the one who violates that turf.
makes decisions arbitrarily
An administrator who makes decisions arbitrarily could have a problem with others who see his decision-making as unfair. A good example from my school experiences involves purchasing technology and products for classroom use. Each year, academic departments are asked to submit their requests. This past year, we submitted requests to the board office, and submitted our rationales for what we wanted to order. Many departments appeared to get everything they ordered while other departments got little to nothing. The administrator in charge of the orders appeared to make those decisions arbitrarily, causing some confusion and hard feelings among school faculty members.
has a negative or indifferent self-image
When a faculty whose school has not made AYP in three years--even though they have instituted Learning Focused Schools and are beginning to institute new performance standards--it is hard to keep them from have a negative feeling about their place of work, especially when they know that further sanctions for not making AYP would mean they would have to go to a new school improvement program, begin being trained on that program, and then institute yet another program to “save” their school.